When comparing Hangouts vs Rocket.Chat, the Slant community recommends Rocket.Chat for most people. In the question“What is the best team chat software?”Rocket.Chat is ranked 8th while Hangouts is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Rocket.Chat is:

Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on [GitHub](https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat).

Pros

Pro

Group video support

If you have signed in your Google account, Hangouts allows making video calls with up to 10 people or one-on-one. There are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 as well as offers support for those accounts.

Additionally, you can switch between using either the front-facing or rear-facing camera on your phone or tablet.

Pro

Free and cross-platform

Google offers all features of Hangouts completely free on iOS, Android and web with quick and reliable sync across all platforms. It's also tightly integrated in other Google services - it can be accessed from services such as Gmail, Google+, Chrome.

While the standard Hangouts offering is completely free, there are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 and offers support that may cost money.

Pro

No need to create a separate account if you use any other Google service

Hangouts uses Google account credentials. If you use any other Google service, then you already have an account set up.

Pro

Chrome browser extension

Use the extension on any computer you can run Chrome browser to text from your computer or tablet!

Pro

Excellent read receipts in group chat

It's possible to know what each and every participant of the group has read. Their icons are displayed below the last message.

Pro

Save and sync your chats across multiple devices

Start chatting on your phone, then on your computer, then on your tablet seamlessly!

Pro

Can share animated GIFs

If you have gifs in your mobile phone, you can share them in the conversation and your partner will be able to see it animated in the chat.

Pro

Google Voice integration

Google Voice is a service that enables making and receiving free phone calls within US. Google Voice forwards incoming calls to all connected devices and allows placing calls from any of the connected devices, but they will show as coming from the Google Voice number.

Hangouts completely integrates Google Voice, allowing you to place calls and receive texts and voicemail from all of your devices. The Hangouts app for Android also includes a needed dialer for making calls with the users Google Voice number.

Pro

Free calls to US and Canada from anywhere in the world

Hangouts app for Android can be extended with an optional dialer for making calls. Most calls to US and Canada are free and international calls have cheap rates.

Pro

Advanced status sharing

Hangouts can inform about the status of other users including what device they are currently using, whether they are in the middle of a call and when were they last seen. This allows making sure that you're not disturbing someone when initiating a conversation. It's possible to granularly turn off status sharing.

Pro

Video tools

Hangouts can add different effects and overlays to video calls that can be viewed on your device. Unfortunately, they can't be set from your phone.

Pro

Seamless integration with OK Google for voice control and typing

Hangouts can be used completely hands free, even if the app is not open and the phone is locked: "OK Google, send a Hangouts message to Mary".

Pro

Free and open source

Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on GitHub.

Pro

Native apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms

Pro

Very active and helpful community

Pro

Video conferencing support

Rocket.Chat supports video calls.

Pro

Will allow for anonymous use

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Cons

Con

Lack of end to end encryption

Communications are encrypted between client and Google servers but not from sending client to receiving client. This means that there is still a possibility for someone other than the receiver to read your message if they have access to internal Google servers. But it allows also lightweight chat history search, spam protection and other features.

Con

Transitioning to corporate orientation

Google is turning Hangouts in to a Slack competitor. It's unclear what the future of Hangouts is, but Google has said the consumer Hangouts we now have 'isn't going anywhere.'

Con

No way to moderate groups

If a member of a group chat room becomes disruptive, or there's some other need, there's no way in Hangouts to remove somebody from an existing chatroom. Similarly, if somebody is no longer active, there's no way to remove that user from the chat room to make slot for new active members.

Con

Is owned by Google

Google is a cooperation that earns money from collecting data and breaching privacy.

Con

Not available on Windows Phones

There is no Hangouts app for the Windows Phone.

Con

Doesn't support sending voice notes or video recordings

Currently there is no built in function that supports creating and sending voice notes or video recordings.

Con

Poor interface

The app tends to lag, the design can be confusing and considering that another app has to be installed that supplies another icon in the home screen in order to get a dialer for calls in Hangouts, overall it is very confusing and cluttered.

Con

No rich text editing

On Android you can receive messages with bold or italic text. However, you cannot bold or italicize text on Android, only on iOS devices or via the web interface.

Con

Poor indication of who's online

There is no way to find out if a person in your contact's list is online or not in the Android app.

Con

Poorly manages data

Doesn't cache images well either received or sent. Often users will see the sent images re-downloading, same for conversations.

Con

No customer support

Free product, you're on your own.

Con

Buggy video calls

Whether video calls work on your device is pure lottery, and there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Con

Won't send SMS/MMS anymore

They removed support for sms/mms. The same goes with integration to hangouts.

Con

No SMS/MMS backup

They don't have options to backup sms to cloud.

Con

API support was removed

This change closed options for integrations and connections between similar apps.

Con

SMS messages sent from the web app can't be sent outside North America

SMS messages sent from the web app can only be sent to number in America and Canada - sending to foreign numbers won't work, although you can still receive texts from anywhere.

Con

No way to block new registrations

Without the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat.

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